Episode 116: The Art of Spontaneous Communication (Rebroadcast)

We've all been there: put on the spot during a meeting and found ourselves tongue-tied. In this episode, we tackle the challenge of spontaneous communication head-on. I'm joined by Matt Abrahams, who is a Lecturer at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business and the host of the “Think Fast, Talk Smart,” which draws in millions of listeners per episode. His TEDx Talk has captivated a global audience, and his latest book is titled “Think Faster, Talk Smarter: How to Speak Successfully When You're Put on the Spot.” 

Today, Matt shares his insights into preparing for those unscripted moments, managing speaking anxiety, and mastering the mindset shifts critical for effective communication. We cover practical strategies for nailing Q&A sessions and confidently handling challenging conversations. 

If you enjoy the show, please rate it on Spotify or iTunes. Your ratings help more people like you discover the podcast!

Episode Highlights

• How preparation paradoxically improves your ability to speak spontaneously 
• Making your message resonate and be memorable 
• Creating a personalized anxiety management plan to reduce speaking anxiety 
• A critical mindset shift that improves communication quality and effectiveness 
• Reframing errors as learning opportunities to improve communication skills  
• How improving our listening skills can make spontaneous speaking more effective  
• Mastering Q&A sessions by engaging with people who are opposed to your ideas 
• Methods for handling difficult questions in tricky scenarios

Matt’s view on the greatest unmet wellbeing need at work today

“I think we saw with the pandemic, just how raw some people can be. It exposed that and put a light on it. And it's important that we respect it and that we connect with it. As a teacher, I see it in my students, I see it my colleagues. So, I believe all of us have to take a step back and remind ourselves that first and foremost, we're humans, we have challenges and issues, both in inside ourselves and in the relationships we have. And I think we need to spend more time respecting that in offering to help those who are struggling.”

What “working with humans” means to Matt

“To me, it is a reminder that communication is relational and about connection, not about transactions. We work with others, others who have their own existence, their own ideas, their own belief, and we need to remember that it's all about the relationship and the connection that we have and I think that is very powerful and very important.”

Resources

Follow: Matt on LinkedIn
Visit: Matt’s website
Read: Think Faster, Talk Smarter: How to Speak Successfully When You're Put on the Spot 

Full Transcript

Note: This is an unedited AI-generated transcription. Please excuse any errors or inconsistencies.

Matt Abrahams 
When we switch from monologue to dialogue, when you know we're speaking and all of a sudden others start speaking at us or with us, it can be very challenging. It's a very different role that you're having to take on. And we all know those speakers who are really good at speaking. But then in that interactive kind of communication, they don't do as well. So there's several things to answer your question that I think are important. One is mindset going in, many of us see q&a situations as threatening or challenging, like somebody's coming at me. They're trying to show that I'm not as smart or I didn't say that my ideas have have holes or don't have the merit. We need to reframe that q&a To my mind and most spontaneous speaking situations are really opportunities to connect, to extend and expand. Even in the worst situation where somebody really is gunning for you and they really want to show their idea or perspective is better. You can still engage those people. In fact, I prefer to engage those people over the people who are apathetic and don't say anything. Somebody who is diametrically opposed to me and asks me a really challenging question. At least we're both passionate about the topic, and there's probably a way we can find some some collaborative space there.

Michael Glazer
Welcome to humans at work. I'm your host, Michael Glaser. I'm a Tokyo based certified leadership coach, and my life purpose is to make well being at work a globally accepted basic human right. And this podcast helps by giving you fresh perspectives and actionable ideas for making working with other humans better for everyone. Have you ever found yourself tongue tied in the meeting or wished you could express your ideas more clearly on the fly? We've all been there, and today's episode dives into the art of spontaneous communication. Joining me is Matt Abrahams. Matt is a lecturer at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business and he hosts the chart topping podcast Think fast talk smart, with 2 million downloads per episode. His TEDx talk on communication strategies has captivated over 30 million viewers globally. And his latest book is titled think faster, talk smarter, how to speak successfully when you're put on the spot. In this conversation, Matt shares his expertise on preparing for impromptu speaking, managing speaking anxiety, and mastering the mindset shifts that are essential for effective communication. You'll also hear highly practical strategies for handling q&a sessions and navigating challenging conversations. So let's dive in and learn how to think faster and talk smarter with Matt Abrahams. Your book emphasizes the importance of effective communication in spontaneous situations. And one of the suggestions you make in the book is that preparation is key. Now, given that you're also such a highly popular podcaster How do you personally prepare for the spontaneous back and forth that come up during your interviews?

Matt Abrahams 
Yeah, so one of the big ironies and counterintuitive notions of what I do is that preparation actually helps with being spontaneous. And I tell people, you know, if you think about it, though, that's that's true in lots of domains, you know, if you're a musician you practice so that when you riff, you can just do it when you're an athlete, you practice so you can do your thing in the moment. So for the podcast, I generally have a flow in mind, and I have some certain goals that I want to achieve the people I talk with, just like what you do tend to be very interesting, and I have some ideas that I'd like to bring out. But then along the way along the journey, I just like to go with where the conversation goes, knowing that I will always bring it back to the general direction we have. And I think that's important in spontaneous speaking as well. You have a desired goal or destination. And then you steer people in that direction. And you do it through listening through asking questions through paraphrasing so they're tools you leverage to get you back on track when it's appropriate to do that.

Michael Glazer
I like this idea of Know Your goal or I often hear communicators talk about know your message. The other thing that I often hear in partnership with that is also know your audience does is your preparation for spontaneous back and forth tailored to each guest.

Matt Abrahams 
Absolutely, absolutely. So I do a fair amount of research for each guest. I will read their work if they're if they've written things academically or, you know, for the for the more general public. I'll listen to other podcasts they've been on I'll watch videos if they exist. Yeah. So I the fundamental mistake people make planned or spontaneous is they failed to really understand their audience and the needs have their own audience. And that's important because what we know from from decades of academic research is if you can make your message relevant to your audience make it salient. They're more likely to Pay attention, they're more likely to remember they're more likely to act on it. And how can you do that if you don't know who they are. So I often advise people to do reconnaissance, reflection and research as best they can on the audience's they know they're speaking to or might be speaking to.

Michael Glazer
The the reconnaissance in the room and the research are clear to me, what's the reflection part?

Matt Abrahams
Thank you for that, because I think it is a little different. What I think is important to do is to reflect on what you've learned and how it relates to what you know about other people, or about your audience are about what your intent is, you know, a lot of us might just interview and say, Oh, the person I'm speaking with, as a lawyer has legal background, so I must use legal things. But then if we think about it, we could say, you know, when I in the past, went down this path with somebody who had a special domain of knowledge, it didn't go so well, I should have done it a little differently. So we need to take a little bit of time, time is really the enemy here. A lot of us are so busy, we just don't have time to do this reflection, this reconnaissance. So give yourself a little bit of permission to take that extra time to think about it. And it makes a huge difference in your communication.

Michael Glazer 
The being kind to yourself parts I find being important, very important. And it also relates to something that I wanted to ask you, because so many of us can relate to feeling some level of anxiety or nervousness when it comes to speaking sometimes it's a function of not having the time to prepare the way we think we ought to. And you have an acronym called PAMP personalized anxiety management plan, can you walk me through? Like what goes into the plan? And how do you go about creating one? Yeah,

Matt Abrahams 
so anxiety really looms large and most communication, most people feel nervous in high stakes communication planned or spontaneous. And yet, it's possible to reduce some of that anxiety. I'm all about anxiety management, I don't think it's possible to ever truly overcome all anxiety around speaking. So we need to create plans to help and I call them anxiety management, plans, amps. And all of us vary in what works for us. My first book I wrote was called speaking up without freaking out was has 50 academically verified techniques for managing anxiety, it is my hope that three or four will work for people, everybody's different. So it's really about finding what works for you. When it comes to managing anxiety, it's really about two major avenues to work. One is sources what, what initiates and exacerbates our anxiety. And then the other has to do with the actual symptoms that we feel. And there are techniques and things we can do to manage both. So an anxiety management plan is really a combination of those tools that work for us. And I have one myself, I'm happy to share it. And all of my students and people I coach, I encouraged to create them. And there are people I taught decades ago who are still using their anxiety management plan. It's, it's fun, some people will just check in with me. So I've had the same person was a student years ago, he talked to me about how he used his anxiety management plan. When he got married, and he had to give a presentation as part of his wedding. Then Unfortunately, his father passed away, he had to give a eulogy, he used the same anxiety management plan. When one of his kids was born. They did a big party, and he stood up and spoke. So it's kind of fun to watch the same plan being used in all these life events. But every tile, I'm sorry, it's very versatile. It is well, I mean, the reality is the same issue is presenting itself. It's just in different situations being nervous speaking in front of others. So that's what it's all about. That's what it boils down to.

Michael Glazer
You mentioned a minute ago, you're happy to share your plan, would you? Yes, certainly.

Matt Abrahams
So I do three things. I've been doing these three things for a long, long time. I've adjusted them over the years. So when I get nervous, what happens for me physiologically is I perspire, I sweat and I blush I turn red. There's good reason for that. When we get nervous, our heart beats faster, we tense up a little bit, it's like when you're exercising, you've got more blood pumping through tighter tubes, so your body temperature increases. And that's what causes the blushing in the sweating. A way to reduce that is to reduce your core body temperature. And a very simple solution is to simply hold something cold in the palms of your hand. The palms of your hand are thermo regulators for your body. And on a cold morning, Michael, if you've ever held a cup of warm tea or coffee and felt it warm you up. I'm just doing the same thing in reverse. So before I speak, I'll hold something cold to reduce the sweating and blushing. I also want to warm up my voice and get present oriented many of us get nervous because we're afraid of a potential negative future outcome from our communication. And we can short circuit that if we At present oriented, so I say a tongue twister. And I say a tongue twister three times it's the same one I'll share it in just a moment. And saying the tongue twister you can't say it right unless you're in the present moment. Plus it warms up your voice. I am shocked at how many people just go from not saying anything for a long time. And then they just start talking, you know, if you're an athlete or you exercise, you know, you should warm up first. Same thing with with speaking. So I will say to myself, or out loud, actually, I slit a sheet, a sheet I slit. And on that slitted sheet I sit and I say it three times fast out loud, and it warms me up. And part of why I like that tongue twisters. If you say it wrong, you say a naughty word. So there's a little extra pressure there. And then the third thing I do the third step of my plan is I remind myself that I am in service of my audience. So I will say to myself, right before I speak, I have value to bring. I unlike many people right before I speak, it can be tempting to say a lot of negative things to ourselves, like, I don't deserve to be here, I should have practiced more that person who just spoke is so good, I'll never be as good. And we can cancel out that negative self talk by by doing something positive. And so I say I have value to bring because it reminds me one that I'm in service of my audience, but also that I was invited here to speak for a reason people want to hear from me. And that helps. So those are the three things I do holding something called saying a tongue twister and having a positive affirmation and they worked really well for me.

Michael Glazer 
I want to pick up on the last point, the positive affirmation and how it relates to audiences. Because I know this is part of shifting from kind of that nervous energy of, hey, it's all about me. I know a lot of people falsely believe they need to be perfect in order to be excellent or to be effective. Yeah. And you talk about how do you mind shift from focusing on self to focus on audience? What's the payoff? And how do we do that?

Matt Abrahams 
Yeah, there are a lot of mindset, mind shift changes that we have to do in order to be better at both planned and spontaneous speaking in the new book, I spend really the first four of six chapters talking about mindset shifts, one of the big ones is to be in service of the audience, we get very self focused, when we're put on the spot. And that self focus is protective, we want to do well, we want to protect our reputation, we want to make sure that we're providing value. In academic Psychologists call this the spotlight effect, we feel like the spotlight is on us. The reality is that people pay a lot less attention to us than we think they do, because they're all under their own personal spotlights. And they just can't focus as much. But that's the irony there. So we have to remind ourselves that communication is about getting information from us to others. And it's not just about getting the information out, it's about making it relevant and important for the other people. The purpose of communicating is to really help others to exchange information to make things common or known. And all of that's about the recipient. And so if we can remind ourselves that we really need to be focused on the needs of the other, it can tremendously help and that has to do with how you start when you enter in a room where you might speak spontaneously or plan, you should be thinking about who is my audience? What's important to them? What are their concerns? And how can I address them?

Michael Glazer 
So that's going into the room, one of the other mindshare shift techniques that I almost had that now the word right there myself, wow. Me do is is how do you recover or reorient yourself? When when you make a mistake, and you have a technique called moving from dwelling on what happened to next play, which I love? Can you talk about that a little bit.

Matt Abrahams 
So I am not very athletic. There are some domains where I work hard to try to be athletic. But I my older son is incredibly athletic. And he has had many coaches. He's a tall guy who plays basketball. And one of his coaches taught him and subsequently taught me this notion of next play. And it comes from a very famous coach, Duke's basketball coach, Mike's Yossef ski has this notion of next play. And the idea is this when something really bad happens, we tend to dwell and ruminate on it. And the dwelling in the ruminating prevents us from being present and responding to what needs to be done. And as an athlete, especially in a sport like basketball, which turns on a dime, right, your defense and then all of a sudden your offense right away. If you're dwelling on what just happened, you are at a disadvantage. So he has this mantra of next play. So whatever happens if it goes poorly, forget about it temporarily, go deal with what needs to be done and then later you can reflect on it. Similarly, if something goes amazingly well you make this amazing shot or something positive happens. You don't dwell on that either. You move on to next play. And the same thing is true if we make a mistake, and I have a different view on mistakes anyway, I think we learned best from mistakes, we put a lot of pressure on ourselves not to make mistakes. In the reality is this when you communicate, we only know what you say, we don't know what you meant to say, or what you had rehearsed, saying if it's a prepared presentation. So what we often feel is a defeat in a big error, in many cases, isn't even seen as an error because I didn't know what you intended to say in that moment. So really reframing how we define what's good, what's bad, what's a mistake, what's not a mistake is important. But taking this notion of just move on, get on to what's next can really be powerful.

Michael Glazer 
You mentioned in passing just a word, but it really caught my ear is to temporarily forget Yeah, right. So so that kind of bridges the temporarily forget it be present. And then you can come back to it. If it's a mistake, as you just said, we we learn you believe we learn best from mistakes.

Matt Abrahams 
Yeah, I think mistakes are really important. And I also think that it's really critical that we reflect and iterate to get better, right? You know, many, many of us are just so relieved to complete our communication, either because we're so busy, or we're so nervous. We don't want to spend more time thinking about something that brings us unease. Yet, if we don't, we fall into that trap of you know, that definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results, you have to take time to ask yourself, what worked, what didn't work? What can I do differently? What am I seeing other people do that seems to work for them. That's how you grow. That's how you get better. So I'm a huge fan of reflecting. In fact, I encourage my students and the people I coach every evening, take 30 seconds write down one thing that went well, in your communication that day, write down one thing that didn't go so well, at the end of the week, spend two or three minutes reflecting on the things that you wrote during the week? Is there a pattern? Is there something you would do differently, and then challenge yourself to try things that are different, that's how we get better. So in the moment, say next play later on in that day, maybe reflect on it. And then later on in the week, try to see if there are patterns. And that's how you'll improve and get through the communication you need to get through. You

Michael Glazer 
know, it strikes me in what you're saying that if if you make a habit out of doing it, then the amount of time required to do it well is so much less than if you only do it once in a blue moon.

Matt Abrahams 
I love that you picked up on that. Yes, people say Oh, this reflecting takes a long time. And all of this. If you do it gradually take small steps, small amount of times in the long run, it helps you tremendously, and you end up saving a ton of time.

Michael Glazer 
I want to shift gears and talk about listening skills. So can you talk about how improving our listening skills can make spontaneous speaking more effective? It seems counterintuitive, but I suspect it's true.

Matt Abrahams 
Absolutely. It's true. And it's one of those things that's counterintuitive. There are several things that are counterintuitive. In the book I wrote in the work I do, which is that one you can prepare to be spontaneous. That seems silly, and you need to listen better to speak better. It's like, ooh, that seems weird. But let me give you an example that I think helps really clarify this. Let's take as a premise that many of us don't listen, well. We listen, just enough to understand the gist of what somebody's saying. And then we begin planning and rehearsing and evaluating, and not really listen. So let's imagine Michael, you and I come out of a meeting. And you say, Hey, Matt, what do you think, how'd that go? And it was a meeting that didn't go particularly well. If I'm only partially listening or not listening deeply, I might say, Oh, Michael just asked for feedback. Well, here's what went wrong. Here's what we need to do better. I can't believe that this happened. But had I paid more attention in a more nuanced way I might have noticed, you left through the back door. You were looking out the window as you asked me that question. You didn't have the general gregarious tone in your voice. What you were really asking for in that moment was not was not feedback, but support. And I totally missed it because I wasn't present. I wasn't listening. And what I did is I give you a bunch of critical feedback in a moment where you were feeling down so I actually did worse. I didn't help you at all, I made it even worse. So that's why listening is important. We have to listen to understand the nuance, the context what's going on. In I've adopted a technique from a colleague of mine, his name is Collins Dobbs, he teaches these crucial conversations that we have to have and he has a framework that I love and it works really well for listening. So he gave me permission to adopt it. And it's called PACE, space. Grace. When you listen, you need to give yourself a little pace. You have to slow down. We are all moving around so fast. I have to slow down so I can really listen, if I jumped to conclusions, if I invoke heuristics to just assume, then I can get in trouble. So I have to slow things down. Second, I have to give space. And this is both physical space, if we're in an environment that's not conducive to listening or having a conversation, move to a different space, but it's also mental space, I have to free up my mind to really listen to what you're saying, give myself permission to be present with you so I can hear so that's the mental space. And then grace, you know, when somebody speaks, and we listen intently, we also have to give ourselves permission to listen to our reactions to what you're saying, you might say something that makes me curious, or makes me doubtful. And I have to listen to that internal conversation and give it permission to come out just like what I'm listening to you. Because we have you know, you, we might have a long standing relationship and something you say might remind me of something else. So the pace space grace, I think is a really important tool for helping us better listen,

Michael Glazer 
there's one other technique that you write about in the book, and I want to ask you about it as well, which is the three P's. Uh huh.

Matt Abrahams 
Yeah. So so there's a lot conspiring against us when it comes to listening. And these three P's represent those three things. So it's three barriers that get in the way all that start with the letter P. So when it comes to listening, there's physical noise. So the environment can be loud, as I get older, lots of environments are too loud for me to listen to. So physical noise, what's happening in the environment makes it difficult to hear. Then there's physiological noise, what's going on in our body, if I'm hungry, if I'm angry, if I'm nervous, all of those work against my ability to listen, well. And then finally, there's psychological noise, my judgments, my evaluations, those get in the way too. So we have to first recognize that there are these things that impede listening. And we have to actively work to minimize their impact. Sometimes it's just being aware. Sometimes it's saying, like, I want to have this really important conversation, you're initiating, but let me grab a quick bite to eat, or let's go do it over there where it's less noisy. Those kinds of things, help us get out of our own way. And listen better.

Michael Glazer 
There. There's a story in the book about a project manager who saves this doom project by cutting through those three types of noises. And there. Yeah,

Matt Abrahams 
yeah. So So there, I have many examples that I can give about this. But this notion of listening intently, so that you can really understand what is needed in the moment. So there's a story where lots of situations have happened to me where somebody's company was shifting direction. So this was a company that would help take companies to the cloud. And they had, they realized that if they actually automated this process, so they would build tools for specific customers, and they were consultancy that would then help bring things to the cloud. And then they realized what was more efficient for them was to build tools that they could then use this. So they were shifting their business from selling people to selling software. And they had to listen, that the CEO had to listen better to really understand what concerns his employees had, so he could better answer their questions. So that's one of many stories I tell in the book that really highlight the value of listening, the value of structuring responses and the the value of being present in the moment.

Michael Glazer 
That that, when it comes my experience in, in helping organizations and leaders lead inclusive change, successful change is that's so critical as being able to help employees or help leaders identify what are the employee concerns? Yeah. And instead of transacting to say, I've got an answer for it to just be spontaneous and engage with them on it instead? Absolutely,

Matt Abrahams 
yeah. So that the key word that you said there that I think is so important is to engage with it, it's one thing to understand it another thing to know it and then finally, do engage with it. I think that's so important.

Michael Glazer 
There's one thing knowing that we, in my preparation, coming into this conversation that I wanted to ask because it comes up all the time. In my work, I'm sure it must come up so often for you. And in fact, you've got a chapter in the book called rocking the q&a. So I want to ask you about this. What's in your playbook when it comes to rocking a q&a?

Matt Abrahams 
Una it for many people is incredibly challenging. And when we switch from monologue to dialogue, when you know, we're speaking and all of a sudden others start speaking at us or with us, it can be very challenging. It's a very different role that you're having to take on and we all know those speakers who are really good at speaking but then in that interactive kind of communication, they don't do as well. So there's several things to answer your question that I think are important. One is mindset going in, many of us see q&a situations as threatening or challenging, like somebody's coming at me. They're trying to show that I'm not as smart or I didn't say that my ideas have have holes or don't have the merit. We need to reframe that q&a, to my mind, in most spontaneous speaking situations are really opportunities to connect, to extend and expand, even in the worst situation where somebody really is gunning for you, and they really want to show their idea or perspective is better. You can still engage those people. In fact, I prefer to engage those people over the people who are apathetic and don't say anything. Somebody who is diametrically opposed to me and asks me a really challenging question. At least we're both passionate about the topic. And there's probably a way we can find some some collaborative space there, the person who's totally quiet and shut down, that's hard. So the first part of this is just your mindset. The second part has to do with how you control yourself in the moment. So when somebody asks a question, we need to be very receptive to the question. Many of us are like, Oh, you have a question. And we cross our arms and we step back, you step forward, be open, listen to what the person says. And then when you answer, it is very important, I think, to use structure to help us answer questions. And I have a structure in the book I teach. And I've been teaching the structure for a long, long time. I call it a DI, D for adding value. It's answered the question, give a detailed example. And then describe the relevance. So add a good answer to my mind does those three things. So let's imagine Michael, that you're interviewing me to be a communication instructor as I am? What's a question? You might ask me? If you're interviewing me to hire me to be a communication teacher of some sort? Can you ask me a question that just doesn't have a yes, no answer or specific number? What's a question you might ask? And by the way, everybody, this is totally spontaneous. I don't know what Michael is going to say.

Michael Glazer 
Have you handled challenges from students in the classroom?

Matt Abrahams 
Excellent. Thank you for that question. So challenges from students I see as opportunities to learn. I had a student Believe it or not, who and midway through the class, when we took a break, came up and said, what you are doing is all wrong, and you're actually damaging your students. In that moment, I could have been very defensive and said, Get out of my class, or what do you mean, I've been doing this for decades. Instead, I said, Tell me more what's going on? What does that mean for you. And in his response, I learned a lot and in fact, changed the way I teach that topic. So what this means is, if you hire me, I'm actually going to encourage students to disengage, to think critically, and not disengage to dis to disagree, and to think critically about the things that we're talking about. And that's where the learning happens both for the student and for me. So let's let's diagnose what I just did. Let's dissect it. So I answered the question. I then gave an example. It's a very real world example. I even write about it in the book. And then I explained what that means for you as somebody who would hire me what it means for your students and what it means for me personally, personally, I didn't know your question, but I knew how I was going to answer the question I was going to give an answer, give an example and then explain the relevance. So all I had to do is think about what am I going to put in that structure? In essence, answering the question is like making a meal. If you have a recipe, all you have to do is put the ingredients into the recipe. And that's all I did there.

Michael Glazer 
So a couple of questions popped into my mind here. And you say that one is, wow, that's a very elegant answer using such a simple model. So it really bring for me, it really brings to life, the power of a model. That's so simple. The next question or first question, I guess that was a comment is, does this mean that when somebody's gunning for you, you also use the Add to to answer the question, or is there another play that you have in your playbook to handle those, like really challenging or adversarial type of questions that you receive?

Matt Abrahams 
So I would definitely use add, I might in advance of it. In advance, I might use a paraphrase, to soften the blow of the question, or to get at the crux of the issue. So if somebody comes at me with a really spicy question, I might before I answer it, paraphrase it in a way to either clarify what the real issue is, or to maybe soften the blow of that issue. To me. So paraphrasing is a useful tool. So let's imagine you say that tool or that technology you're thinking about is wrong. It's not going to work? I might in before I answer the question, I might say. So the way to do our authentication really requires that we make sure we understand where the underlying user is located. So what I did is I focused that, hey, that tool is wrong to bring it back to the core issue, which is authentication. That's a technical example I do. I work with a lot of technologists. But in that paraphrasing, I was able to take some of the sting out of it, some of the emotion out of it, and get us back focused on what the specific issue is. Now, you could disagree with my approach to how we authenticate, that's okay. And in fact, that would invite us to collaborate and figure that out better. So I would perhaps add a paraphrase in advance of using Add to help soften some of that. So you

Michael Glazer 
say that's a benefit for yourself. Do you find that also helps take the edge off of the person who raises the challenge?

Matt Abrahams 
Oh, it absolutely does. One. Paraphrasing validates what the other person said. It doesn't mean you've agreed it just validates I heard you. Yeah, right. It it does give them permission to say no, no, no, no, I'm more interested in this, which again, is a very useful thing for them and for me, so yes, it has it has benefit for everybody and the other people in the room, perhaps who are listening, they see that oh, Matt is at least respectful and trying to figure out what the key issue is. Right. So yeah, I think there's benefit all around from paraphrasing. I think paraphrasing is an essential communication skill. I think everybody should work on and learn to paraphrase. It can be used in so many ways.

Michael Glazer 
I know in those situations, one of the reasons I try to use it is it just gives me a couple of seconds of extra time to think about what what's my answer going to be? Or in what context? Am I going to try to answer this question? Yeah,

Matt Abrahams 
absolutely. So it buys you time. Yeah, paraphrasing is a lower order cognitive skill. What that means is we don't use as many cognitive resources to paraphrase, which means we can use the ones that we're not using to actually begin formulating the answer. So it's a great way to do that.

Michael Glazer 
But what about when we receive questions on the spot that we're not prepared to answer or we shouldn't answer in the form that they've been asked? How do we handle that?

Matt Abrahams 
So I'm going to break this down into two different categories here. If, if the question is one that is just not understood, or is unclear, then paraphrasing can help you figure out if okay, what's the real question here? So I can answer it. If it is a question that you know the answer to but for whatever reason, you are not permitted to answer it. So I work for example, sometimes with CFOs of companies who are going public, they can't give some I mean, they're actually legally bound not to say certain things. So in those cases, there are there are a couple of ways and I've written about this. You blame, reframe, or explain. So you can blame. You can say, look, the there are legal rules that prevent me from doing that I'm blaming a system that doesn't let me answer it. I could reframe the question to be about something different. Or I can explain. I'll say I can't answer the specifics. But here are the conditions that would have to be true. Or here are the things that we would consider in doing what you've asked. So imagine somebody saying, When are you going to go public? I know you failed to go out. When are you going to go public? Well, I can't tell you when but I can say, What will have to happen before we go public is the market conditions should be like this, we'll need to make sure our revenue is in good alignment. And we have a good plan. So I didn't answer when but I told you what had to be true. In order for us to consider doing that. So blame, explain or refrain is how you handle those circumstances.

Michael Glazer 
I'm talking with Matt Abrahams, who is a lecturer in organizational behavior at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business. He is also the host of the number one international chart topping podcast called Think fast talk smart. And his latest book, which we're talking about a lot today is called Think faster, talk smarter, how to speak successfully when you're put on the spot. So, Matt, just as you finish your podcasts with three questions to all of your guests, I finished mine with two questions to all. So are you ready for them?

Matt Abrahams 
I will try my best to think faster and talk smarter.

Michael Glazer 
Okay, so the first one is, what in your view is the greatest unmet well being need in the workplace today?

Matt Abrahams 
Think mental health and well being are critical. I think we saw with the pandemic, just how raw some people can be it expose that and put a light on it. And it's important that we respect it and that we connect with it as as a teacher, I see it in my students. I see it in my colleagues. So I believe all of us have to take a step back and remind ourselves that first and foremost we're humans, we have challenges and issues both in inside ourselves and in the relationships we have. And I think we need to spend more time respecting that in offering to help those who are struggling for sure.

Michael Glazer 
What's, what's one thing just as a follow up to that, that you would like to change, if you could to address that.

Matt Abrahams 
I would like for people to include in their daily work, checking in with others, just to see how people are doing. I think it's common courtesy. I think it's important. I think he can do a lot more than just say, is anybody having some challenges or issues? I think it's just a way to connect. I think we are all so busy and juggling so many things that we forget the common courtesy of, Hey, how are you doing what's going on, especially for people we know well, and are connected with like at work in our personal lives. So I would encourage people to just take a moment to check in and everybody can find their own way of doing it. But I think that would be very helpful.

Michael Glazer 
And Matt, final question, what is the phrase working with humans mean to you?

Matt Abrahams 
To me, it is a reminder that communication is relational and about connection, not about transactions. You know, we work with others, others who have their own existence, their own ideas, their own belief, and we need to remember that it's all about the relationship and the connection that we have and I think that is very powerful, and very important.

Michael Glazer 
Thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and subscribe to the show. It takes only a few seconds to do and remember there's a lot more insightful content waiting for you at E n dot people focused consulting.com happy listening

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